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TrapperKeeper – Best of 2011: Subway in Harlem 2: Breakfast in Philly

Oh, hai “that time of year again,” didn’t hear you come in – well, have a seat and make yourself comfortable. I’m not spectacular at year-end reviews… I prefer life like I prefer my albums: gapless. That said, I hat-tipped five artists, songs, and albums that made me pause and take time to jot the time and place – year included – over the last 300-someodd days; and five creations that embodied and encapsulated sonic aesthetic for 2011. To the five I take, to have and to hold; forever like a TrapperKeeper, Pop safe in the fold. #enjoi

Subterranean transportation, morning moods let liberty ring… Savvy Society’s Subway in Harlem 2: Breakfast in Philly was this year’s incognito aural infiltrator. New Jack Swing meets the urban jungle… Deft sampling, staccato kit play, quick hi-hat raps over distant cowbell, claps, and punch-to-pause kick drum… all beneath freestyled jazz piano solo loops… shadowed reendtroductions… In the still of the night Breakfast in Philly runs along like a late 20th century transition soundtrack, between decades, between the 80s and 90s, an understated intermission at the heart of postmodernism… a culture of buppies boomeranging and former b-boys digging warriors and leaving school daze behind… after the Other creative class crafted a proper niche, before it succumbed to the greed and glitz, when art was pulsed by the lost love in the heart of the city…